Late at night, the three-in-one are drawn to the cemetery by a slightly familiar voice dancing around in their heads. Mindee and Celeste are confused by this, but Phoebe attentively listens to the calls of the stranger. Suddenly, the girls levitate upwards, ignoring the mysterious cries of it not being the right time "yet". Meanwhile Emma Frost has a somewhat prophetic nightmare about becoming the Phoenix and scorching the Earth itself. Emma wakes up to a phone call detailing trouble with the Stepford Cuckoos. The X-Men peer up at the sky to find the girls recklessly flying about; to which Emma responds by reaching into their minds and forcing them to ground. They are later confined to three small cells, where Emma severs their unified connection. The girls turn on their mentor and harshly expel her from their thoughts. Fearing that the Phoenix has returned, Emma tells the X-Men that the girls must be thwarted decisively. The others, however, only assume that the girls' newfound powers are a secondary mutation. Celeste visits Beast, who tells her that she is perfectly normal and that the "darkness" she feels inside has been felt by many of the X-Men before. The remaining sisters are confronted by Logan and Emma but when each grows irritated with their teachers, they fly off in a fiery display. Despite Celeste's hesitation, the girls manifest a Phoenix raptor and fire a searing blast at Wolverine. Their presence awakens Quentin Quire, while in the cemetery, their sisters Esme and Sophie rise from the dead.

Notes

Part One of Five - Limited Series

At the end of the X-Men: Phoenix – Endsong limited series (see below) a fragment of the Phoenix Force was left on Earth and visited the Stepford Cuckoos.

Quentin Quire was believed to have been killed in New X-Men #138 after he caused a riot in the institute. He was then contained in Beast's lab as a being of pure psionic energy. Afterwards, in Endsong he tried using the Phoenix Force to resurrect his obsession (Sophie) but after rejecting him, Quentin returned to his dormant state.